One would think after having co-created Spider-Man and being a creative force in wall-crawler cartoons from the hero's earliest days, Stan Lee would garner a nice, meaty, important role.

But alas, no, the "Generalissimo" for generations of Marvel Comics true believers is still working his way up the character pecking order.

"I just wish I could be promoted from being a janitor. Or at least call me a custodial engineer," the jovial Lee, 90, quips.

Voiced by the comic-book legend — and looking just as dashing — Stan the Janitor gets a moment to shine with his trusty mop and save Spider-Man's posterior in a high school hallway fight against the Lizard in Disney XD's Ultimate Spider-Man this weekend. Lee's half-hour airs Sunday morning at 11:30 a.m. ET/PT, following a new episode of Marvel's Avengers Assemble featuring Brian Bloom (As the World Turns) voicing the superhero Hyperion.

"I probably steal the show from everybody else. All the other actors are very angry at me. How can you be more colorful than a janitor with a mop?" Lee says.

"I like to feel that my roles in these cartoons are very pivotal. Without the janitor, this whole thing would fall apart."

It marks his ninth time playing Stan the Janitor in three seasons of Ultimate Spider-Man, and Lee's involvement in Spidey cartoons goes back to the original series in 1967 — five years after he and Steve Ditko created the character for Marvel.

"I was writing them by etching them on the walls of caves," Lee says with a chuckle. (He also was a narrator on Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends in the early '80s.)

Animation was always important for Lee because, even as a child, Walt Disney was his idol. And he's glad that the Disney company, which bought Marvel in 2009, is putting out quality superhero cartoons that are entertaining for kids but also don't contradict the comics or the popular movies.

"It's great for me to do voices on them. That's the biggest kick of all," Lee says.

He jokes that "I had to learn how to speak like a janitor and act like a janitor," but really his Ultimate Stan sounds like a lot like real-life Stan. He's certainly had enough practice.

"I never stop talking, that's my big problem," he says. "When I was a young kid, about 7 years old, I remember the teacher said, 'Stan, I want you to lock up your mouth and throw away the key, and you can't talk again until I throw the key back to you.'

"That was such vivid imagery to me. If he didn't throw the key back to me, I would have never talked until today!"

Lee, a former Marvel president and current head of his own POW! Entertainment, has also had memorable cameos in Marvel movies going back to 2000's X-Men and including the Marvel Cinematic Universe slate of The Avengers and other recent superhero fare.

He couldn't be in The Wolverine, though, because he didn't have the time to visit the set in Australia, he says. "I mean, the public must be heartbroken if somebody goes to see a Wolverine movie. The movie may make a lot of money because they'll think they missed my cameo and they'll buy another ticket to see it again.

"I've been talking to the Marvel bigwigs and telling them I'd like them to shoot these movies like 30 feet from my house to make it easier for me."

While Lee awaits word on whether he'll end up in Guardians of the Galaxy, which is currently filming in London — "I'll be guarding my house anyway, not the galaxy" — he is reminded of the fact that Disney's purchase last year of Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise, a feather in the cap that he says was a huge boon for the house of Mickey Mouse.